Sutana Jātaka

Jataka No. 398 of the Pali Canon was told by the Buddha as part of the same introductory framework that gave rise to the Sama Jataka. It recalled a former life in which filial devotion and fearless goodwill had once converted a man-eating ogre into a protector of travelers.

In ancient times, King Brahmadatta ruled Varanasi. While on a hunting expedition, the king strayed deep into the forest and rested beneath a colossal banyan tree, unaware that a terrifying, flesh-eating ogre named Makhadeva inhabited its branches. The yakkha had received a boon from the god Vessavana that any creature entering the shadow of the tree trunk became his rightful prey, and he seized the king at once, threatening to tear him limb from limb.

Pleading for his life, King Brahmadatta struck a bargain, promising to send the yakkha a bowl of seasoned rice, a pot of liquor, and a human prisoner to devour every single day. The yakkha agreed, and for months the king fulfilled this gruesome treaty by dispatching condemned criminals from the dungeons, until the prisons of Varanasi stood completely empty with no one left to send.

Desperate, the king placed a purse containing one thousand gold pieces upon an elephant's back and had heralds proclaim throughout the city that whoever volunteered to carry the daily meal to the Banyan Yakkha would receive the fortune for his family's sake. No ordinary citizen was willing to walk toward certain death for any lesser reward.

In a humble hovel in Varanasi lived the Bodhisatta, a virtuous youth named Sutana who labored as an earthenware carrier to feed his blind, aging mother. Seeing her shivering in threadbare rags, Sutana resolved that his own life was fleeting anyway, but a thousand pieces of gold would secure comfort, food, and medicine for her until her last breath. Despite his mother's weeping protests, Sutana accepted the royal gold, deposited it safely with his relatives for her care, and approached the king.

Sutana requested four royal implements: the king's gold-lined slippers, the royal white umbrella, a golden bowl filled with rich banquet food, and a razor-sharp sword of tempered crystal steel. Armed with these, he walked serenely to the dread banyan tree. He put on the golden slippers so his feet would never touch the yakkha's enchanted ground, opened the royal umbrella above his head so the tree's shadow could not fall upon him, and stood just beyond the boundary the yakkha could not cross.

With his crystal sword resting ready in his left hand, Sutana impaled the golden bowl upon the tip of a long staff and extended it toward the tree trunk. He called out that King Brahmadatta sent his daily tribute of fragrant rice, inviting the yakkha to step forth and receive it. The ravenous ogre leaned down from the branches, eager to seize both the food and the boy, but found that Sutana stood entirely invulnerable: his slippers protected his feet, the parasol shielded his head, and the sword radiated dazzling light.

When the yakkha roared at him to step within his shadow, Sutana laughed, fearless and clear, declaring that he was no fool who would deliver his own body to the creature's fangs. He offered the food freely, with goodwill, but told the ogre plainly that his reign of slaughter ended that very day.

When the yakkha raged that he would devour him regardless, Sutana engaged him in a careful dialogue on moral causality. He pointed out that the ogre's own miserable form was the direct karmic consequence of past cruelty, and that devouring innocent mortals now was only fueling the fires of deeper hells still waiting for him. Touched by Sutana's radiant purity, absolute fearlessness, and filial devotion, the yakkha's stony heart finally melted into tears of remorse.

Bowing low before the youth he had meant to kill, the yakkha swore an oath to forsake slaughter entirely, accepted the Five Precepts from Sutana, and promised to protect all wayfarers who passed beneath his tree from that day forward. Sutana escorted the converted yakkha to Varanasi, where King Brahmadatta granted the reformed spirit a peaceful sanctuary and honored Sutana with the rank of supreme commander of the realm.

At the story's end, the Buddha identified the man-eating yakkha with Angulimala and the frightened king with Ananda. The same capacity for conversion through fearless goodwill that had once turned a flesh-eating ogre into a guardian of travelers was the very pattern that would later turn a feared killer into one of the Buddha's own most devoted followers.

What ultimately disarmed the yakkha was never the golden slippers, the parasol, or even the sword, since those implements only kept Sutana alive long enough to speak. The true weapon was a young man's willingness to look directly at a creature everyone else fled from and speak to it as something still capable of change. That willingness was born entirely out of love for a mother who could never have repaid him for the risk he was taking on her behalf. The gold he accepted was never the point of the journey; it was simply the door that let a filial son's courage reach a monster no army had ever been able to touch.